Michael Taylor

United Kingdom,
Kent
Teesside University - School of Computing,
BA Hons Computer Games Animation ,
November 24, 2015

I am an avid film and game enthusiast who actively enjoys creating stories through the art of animation. My biggest achievement to date would be completing university with a predicted first class degree. Prior to university I was always passionate about animation, however I had little to no knowledge of the animation process. In a short amount of time I have developed my animation skills to a much more in depth standard.
I decided that I wanted to create a piece of key framed animation which would challenge me. The Night Shift is an animated short that replicates the famous Michael Jackson ‘Beat It’ dance. Alongside the animated short is a piece of work that focuses on facial animation using a graphical user interface created by myself. This piece of work uses audio from Disney Pixar Toy Story. Prior to the creation of this piece of work, I recognised that my facial animation skills were not very strong. To overcome this, I decided to create a piece of work that would majorly focus on facial animation. I hoped that this would develop vital skills and would improve my ability to create an expressive facial animation.
Upon graduating I hope to progress within the animation industry. Although my degree pathway centred on games animation, I hope to expand into film animation.

Toy Story scene and The Night Shift:
0:00 – 1:06
This section is entirely key framed animation. Facial animation was completed using a custom graphical user interface which I created using morph targets. This section was produced and rendered using 3ds Max.

The entire pieces shown are solely my creations with the exception of the character model which was modelled by a fellow student.

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